Sunday, September 04, 2016

Two men have fronted court, following a police pursuit through Melbourne's north, during which a 23-year-old Deer Park man was shot and killed by an officer.

The dramatic 40-minute chase through the city's west began 1am yesterday, after police spotted a car carrying three men suspected of involvement in a series of business burglaries.

The trio fled from police in a car before abandoning the vehicle in an industrial area in Tullamarine, running across a field and into a factory. With the assistance of a PolAir helicopter and the dog squad, police tracked them down.

The men allegedly stole at least two vehicles from inside the factory in a bid to evade police, and one suspect was isolated by a sergeant in a police car.

The sergeant got out of the car and was then pinned against a wall by one of the stolen vehicles.

“At that stage the sergeant has discharged his firearm. We believe there was four shots fired, one of them fatally wounding the man who was driving, what we say was a stolen vehicle, at that time.”

Two police officers were taken to hospital after the incident, with one sustaining an injury to his hand, another an injury to his leg.

“We thought the sergeant was seriously injured, we thought he may very well have a broken leg, but we’ve had some good news,” Mr Leane said.

“We are waiting for some x-rays but it may be he’s got some severe bone bruising.

“If that’s all he’s got he’s been very, very lucky.”

In a statement today, police said the 18-year-old had been charged with burglary, attempted burglary, theft of a motor car, criminal damage by fire, dangerous driving while pursued by police and reckless conduct endangering life.

The 22-year-old has been charged with burglary, theft of a motor car, dangerous driving while pursued by police, reckless conduct endangering life and handling stolen goods.

Both men appeared before a bail justice in an out of sessions hearing overnight and have been remanded in custody to appear at Melbourne Magistrates' Court today.

LOL. A new politically correct term for genetic inheritance: "rubbing off"

Parents' math skills 'rub off' on their children

September 1, 2016 in Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Parents who excel at math produce children who excel at math. This is according to a recently released University of Pittsburgh study, which shows a distinct transfer of math skills from parent to child. The study specifically explored intergenerational transmission—the concept of parental influence on an offspring's behavior or psychology—in mathematic capabilities.

"Our findings suggest an intuitive sense for numbers has been passed down—knowingly or unknowingly—from parent to child. Meaning, essentially, the math skills of parents tend to 'rub off' on their children," said lead researcher Melissa E. Libertus, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and a research scientist in the University's Learning Research and Development Center. The Department of Psychology is within the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. "This research could have significant ramifications for how parents are advised to talk about math and numbers with their children and how teachers go about teaching children in classrooms."

Within the study, Pitt's researchers found that the performance levels for early school-aged children on standardized mathematic tests could be reliably predicted by their parent's performance on similar examinations. Specifically, they observed major correlations in parent-child performance in such key areas as mathematical computations, number-fact recall, and word problem analysis. Surprisingly, the researchers also found that children's intuitive sense of numbers—i.e. the ability to know that 20 jelly beans are more than 10 jelly beans without first counting them—is predicted by their parents' intuitive sense of numbers. Researchers determined that such close result parallels could not have been produced through similar institutional learning backgrounds because their previous research showed that this intuitive sense of numbers is present in infancy.

The findings represent the first evidence of intergenerational transmission of unlearned, nonverbal numerical competence from parents to children. While separate studies have pointed to the existence of intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities, only a select few have examined parental influences in specific academic domains, such as mathematics.

Libertus said the study is an important step toward understanding the multifaceted parental influences on children's mathematic abilities. Her future studies will examine why this transference of mathematic capability occurs.

"We believe the relationship between a parent and a child's math capabilities could be some combination of hereditary and environmental transmission," said Libertus. "We look forward to future research endeavors that will explicitly examine the degree to which parents pass down key genetic traits and create an in-home learning environment that is conducive to producing high-achieving math students."

For the present study, the math abilities of parents and children were assessed using the appropriate subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement, a nationally recognized standardized examination of baseline math ability. Children completed three subtests designed to gauge their capabilities in mathematical computations, basic number-fact recall, and word problems with visual aids. Parents completed a math fluency subtest as a measure of mathematical ability, and they were surveyed on the importance of children developing certain math skills.

The study sampled 54 children between the ages of 5 and 8 as well as 51 parents—46 mothers and five fathers—between the ages of 30 and 59. In terms of racial demographics of participating children, 45 were Caucasian, five biracial, three African American, and one Asian. Forty-six participating parents had at least a college degree, and all possessed at least a high school diploma.

A Pitt faculty member since 2013, Libertus' research focuses on the understanding of how children perceive and learn mathematical concepts. The long-range goals of her work seek to identify key factors in the successful learning of mathematics. Emily J. Braham, a doctoral student with a cognitive-neuroscience concentration in the Department of Psychology, assisted in this research study.

The study "Intergenerational Associations in Numerical Approximation and Mathematical Abilities" is available in the latest edition of Developmental Science.

The infamous hacker Guccifer 2.0 released hacked memos he claims came from Nancy Pelosi’s personal computer. She and her staff have denied the allegation, saying, “Leader Pelosi does not have a personal computer at the DCCC, so no hacked, dumped or doctored documents can be attributed to her computer.” In any case, the leaked memos reveal strategic guidance for Democrats as to how best to deal with the Black Lives Matter activist/agitator group. They advise Democrats to “partner” with the group and to “lead from behind,” but not to “co-opt” their movement. The memo warns Democrats to steer clear of using phrases such as “all lives matter” and “black-on-black crime.” You know, avoid saying true things.

Many of the demands of Black Lives Matter are outright racist, yet Democrat leadership views BLM as a movement that can help garner them more votes and support for their leftist causes. The problem is that because the BLM platform is so radical, Democrats risk looking too extreme should they be aligned too closely with BLM. In the meantime, they are content to show support for the radical movement, without getting their hands dirty, as it were.

The real story here is that the Democrat Party would want to so willingly identify itself with such a radical, racist group as Black Lives Matter. Then again, it should come as no surprise given Democrats' long, checkered history of supporting various radical and racist groups.

Blacks are mired in an unendurable status quo engendered by Democrat policies

“It was a simple bump on the street,” she said. “They apologized, but the female did not accept the apology.” —Katia Toussaint, mother of Anthony Nazaire, who was stabbed to death at Cornell University following a brawl early Sunday morning.

While the talkingheads obsess over the antics of second-string NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick — a man so committed to fighting black “oppression” that he wore a Fidel Castro t-shirt at his post-game press conference and pigs-as-police socks during practice — the primary engine of black oppression remains unaddressed.

That engine? A thuggish element in the black community that has been glorified for years, and has turned inner cities into de facto war zones. War zones such as Chicago, where an astounding 400 people were shot and 78 killed in August alone, making it the deadliest month since October 1997.

Chicago is not alone. Baltimore just “celebrated” its 200th homicide of the year, making it the fifth consecutive year it has reached that dubious milestone. Yet as the Baltimore Sun notes, this represents an 11% decline in homicides compared to last year. That’s because 344 people were killed in Baltimore in 2015, making it the city’s highest-per capita rate ever.

One suspects the lack of another record-setting pace is scant comfort to those innocents caught in the maelstrom — a maelstrom overwhelmingly generated by inner city gangs.

“Their street or thug culture is real, with a configuration of norms, values and habits that are, disturbingly, rooted in a ghetto brand of core American mainstream values: hypermasculinity, the aggressive assertion and defense of respect, extreme individualism, materialism and a reverence for the gun, all inflected with a threatening vision of blackness openly embraced as the thug life,” writes Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson.

One suspects those toxic values — that have now bled beyond gangs into the greater minority culture — cost Anthony Nazaire his life.

Yet Patterson, like many of his fellow apologists, attributes this dysfunction to America’s track record of racism, dating back to the days of slavery. But as black conservatives such as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have argued for years, black Americans were making steady progress in times that were far more challenging than today.

What changed? Prior to the “Great Society” project initiated by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program was reserved for widows to fund once-married women who had lost the primary male supporter of the family. Johnson and Congress, however, changed the qualifications: any household where there was no male family head present became eligible for taxpayer subsidies.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the truth-telling Democrat who was branded a racist for doing so, accurately warned America — in 1966 — where the resultant decimation of the nuclear family would ultimately lead. He explained that any community “that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future … asks for and gets chaos.”

And today, the efforts of an ungrateful and misguided NFL quarterback and his fellow apologists are attempting to shift the blame for that chaos onto the police, who they paint as trigger-happy oppressors.

Not exactly. As the leftist Washington Post reveals, “only a small number of the shootings — roughly 5 percent — occurred under the kind of circumstances that raise doubt and draw public outcry.” The paper further notes that in 74% of fatal police shootings, “individuals had already fired shots, brandished a gun or attacked a person with a weapon or their bare hands,” and another 16% “came after incidents that did not involve firearms or active attacks but featured other potentially dangerous threats … most commonly of individuals who brandished knives and refused to drop them.”

What are the apologists trying to obscure? Inconvenient reality: 258 black Americans were killed by police gunfire in 2015. By contrast, nearly 6,000 black Americans were killed by their fellow black Americans.

Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. “Between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the United States,” Jason Riley reveals. “The black arrest rate for most offenses — including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes — is still typically two to three times their representation in the population.”

Other pathologies abound as well. “Police say it was just one sucker punch to the head that killed Sincal Jochola,” reports CBS Philly. “He stumbled, hit the ground and the group, not even waiting a moment, runs away. Detectives are now looking into if this brutal attack could be part of that knockout game.”

That game is one “in which a young man — all the perps appear to be male people of color, mostly blacks — tries to literally knock out an innocent bystander with one blow,” explained black columnist Larry Elder in 2013. A game whose mention the mainstream media characterizes as overblown, despite author Colin Flaherty documenting its “coincidental” occurrence in more than 21 other cities.

The media have also attempted to cover up the existence of disproportionately black flash mobs that have participated in numerous robberies and attacks, some of which are race-based. And then there are just out-and-out black mobs, like the one that attacked white people during the most recent riot in Milwaukee. The same riot our “post-racial” president golfed his way through and maintained a steady silence about, even as his spokesman, Josh Earnest, defended Kaepernick’s anthem protest.

The same president who pals around with music moguls like Jay Z and Beyoncé, both of whom have made careers out of glorifying thug culture and ginning up anti-police sentiment.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder once castigated America as a “nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing racial matters. Yet there’s nothing more revealing than the firestorm directed at Donald Trump by Democrats and their media partners, all for having had the temerity to point out that the overwhelming majority of inner city dystopias have been run by Democrats for decades. What really set them off, however, was when Trump asked black Americans for their votes by posing a simple question: “What have you got to lose?”

That firestorm revealed that the real cowardice resides among progressives who will discuss race only within the parameters they themselves define. The truth “is condemned as hate speech simply because it exposes those who have done genocidal and horrific actions,” writes former congressman Allen West. “We must continue to challenge them at every turn.”

The alternative? “One big difference is that now, on the street, there is no fear,” stated retired Chicago Police Detective Ted O'Connor to Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass. “Even in the ‘90s, with all the killing, the gangs feared the police. When we’d show up, they’d run. But now? Now they don’t run. Now, there is no fear.”

Yes, there is, for the millions of inner city black Americans who continue to endure an unendurable status quo engendered by Democrat policies.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Background

The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog

A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?

Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair

Enough said

A face of Leftist hate: Cory Booker, (D-NJ)

There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though

What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so

Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.

Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners

Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.

A good thought from Thomas Sowell: "The phrase "glass ceiling" is an insult to our intelligence. What does glass mean, except that we cannot see it? In other words, in the absence of evidence, we are expected to go along with what is said because it is said in accusatory and self-righteous tones."

The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole

The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they (under the chairmanship of Ulric Neisser) have had to concede a large gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ.

Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males

Leftist logic: There are allegedly no distinctions between groups of humans, yet we're still supposed to celebrate diversity.

Identity politics is a form of racism

'White Privilege'. .. Oh yes. .. That was abundant in the Irish potato famines. ... And in the Scottish Highland Clearances. ...And in transportations to Australia. ... And in Workhouses. ... 'White privilege' was absolutely RIFE!

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations

Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

One may say that the person who gets in trouble with drugs is just as dumb without them

I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.

I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass

"In the end every feminism ends up being a machismo with a skirt" -- Pope Francis, February 23, 2019

The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"

Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"

Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".

One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.

A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."

Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).

The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin

"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes

What the Bible says about the transexual craze: The male-female distinction is the only innate human distinction God cares about: “God created mankind in his own image . . . male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). “He created them male and female and blessed them” (Genesis 5:2). No ethnic or racial distinction matters in Genesis, only the male-female distinction.

What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian

Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil

The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties. The tide turned in 2017, however, with a public vote authorizing homosexual marriage in Australia

Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!

No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here